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Its finally done! It has taken me the last 2 days of playing around with it, but the pumpkin body wash is finally done!

I didn’t expect it to make so much so I had to find some empty bottles to put it in.

Here’s what I used – If you are someone who needs exact measurements don’t read any further because I don’t use them!

3 bars Ivory Soap

Huge ass amounts of water

About 20 drops pumpkin essential oil

About 10 drops vanilla essential oil

Boil about 2 gallons of water…..I used a big stock pot. Reduce heat to medium for about 10 minutes. Grate bars of soap and add into hot water and STIR STIR STIR!!! I can’t stress enough how much you need to stir. Its going to be really really watery – don’t panic, its supposed to look like that. After every bit of soap is dissolved and mixed in, remove from heat. Let cool and pour into containers to cool. I used mason jars. After mixture is cooled, you can add whatever scented essential oil you like and mix it in. I thought pumpkin & vanilla would be good since we are getting into fall.

I’ve never even heard of essential oils before, but apparently you can do so much with them. I found mine at my local craft store for about $4 a bottle.

Now for my tips – I’m only giving tips because I had the worst time with the original recipe I found online. Every soap is different and the amount of water you need varies greatly!

For example the recipe I found was for Dove soap (I used Ivory since it was on sale for $.30/bar) . It was 3 bars grated soap & 6 cups water. This resulted in containers of hard smooshy glop. I then poured all the mixture back into the stock pot, put on medium heat and added a ton more water. You didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t measure did you? I stirred it up and then let it sit overnight again. It was better but had a “snotty” consistency. I poured some of it into my mixing bowl and ran it under the beaters for a few minutes. This helped get it all mixed up and a better consistency. Its a little foamy, but settling down.

So, if your mixture is too thick, add small amounts of hot water to it at a time to get it to a good consistency.

If the mixture is too thin, warm it up and add more grated soap.

I know some of you are sitting there asking yourselves if its really worth it to go through all this for body wash? For me, absolutely! I have a family of 5 and we are a 1 income household so anywhere I can save money I will.

This cost me under $2.00 to make 167 oz of body wash. I pay $8.98 for 70 oz at the store. To me, that kind of savings is worth it!

I’m still trying to get my Irish Spring batch the right consistency, but once that’s done I won’t have to buy body wash for my family for a really long time!

Although I’m not making any recipes right now, I’m going to pretend at being domestic this week – and where else do I learn how to do this? Pinterest of course!! Every day I’m going to try out 1 or 2 pins and report back here to share if they worked or not. Now, I’m usually one of those people that can never get these “magic” remedies to work so believe me when I say if it works for me it will work for you.

Today I’m trying out some homemade cleaner because I really really need to clean my house…not just dishes & vacuum, but deep clean. I hate cleaning! The first thing I need to do is figure out how to get that big area by the drain in my bathtub clean. I’ve tried everything from bleach to Comet to baking soda scrub to just plain old scrubbing and nothing makes a difference.

I’ve found several pins that swear that a mix of 1 part Dawn Original dish soap and 2 parts vinegar in a spray bottle is the answer. I’m skeptical, but its worth a try.

And of course its not really fun unless I post the before and afters……here is the before pics of my tub – I know, I know people – its not pretty! But in my defense, thats after scrubbing it “clean”. I’ve sprayed down the whole tub/shower and I’m going to wait a few hours and then try rinsing it – I will report back with the results.

UPDATE

Ok….its been a few hours and while I didn’t have any great expectations I have to say I was disappointed with this one – the “after” was after I rinsed and scrubbed and almost no difference…..other than making my house smell like vinegar. I will keep searching. If anyone has a good home cleaner that would remove this stuff feel free to share with me and I’ll try it out!

I do have to say that even though this didn’t work for my tub, its a great cleaner for stainless steel, stove tops, tables, cupboards, etc. – so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

Sorry about the pics…my good camera needs charged so I took these with my crappy phone camera.